Zach Galifiankis plays pretty much the same oblivious, thumb-handed idiot in both films, but partnering him up with a quietly seething Robert Downey Jr. yields far funnier results than having him flanked by two equally stupid (but considerably more prone to hysterical screeching) manchildren. RDJ’s expecting father -a high-strung but straight-faced architect forced to roadtrip across the US with the bearded cretin that got him kicked off his plane – focuses his rage with laser precision. It’s genuinely funny when he punches a kid in the stomach, almost entirely because of the swiftness and efficiency of the blow – in an instant, the outburst has passed without so much of a changing facial expression. These kinds of moments are, simply put, far more entertaining and far less tiring than the prolonged screaming meltdowns that so often punctuate male-led comedies.

The story is predictable, the situations contrived, but Due Date boasts  some great staccato-ish gag delivery, gorgeous scenery and an enormously underrated double act (even though Galifiankis can’t match his co-star’s comedy chops, he’s likeable enough and absolutely sells the more dramatic bits) that probably won’t reform ever again. LoveFilm it, at the very least.

1) Make Akimbo Go To It’s Room And Think About What It’s Done

Most games of multiplayer MW3 are blisteringly fast. The excitement therefore comes in the fraction of a second it takes for you to meet an enemy, level your gun before they do, and be the first make an accurate hit. It’s an almost inconceivably brief period of interaction, but there are so many instances of this during one game that it isn’t really a problem.

All akimbo loadouts successfully remove this. Instead, their user simply strolls around, looking in the vague direction of any foe and liquefying them with a wall of hipfire spray before they can even bring up their sights. This isn’t tense, fair or fun for the victim, and – having tried this tactic myself in a couple of games – doesn’t provide any real satisfaction for the culprit.

It seems to me like, just maybe, secondary weapons should be used as secondary weapons? Making akimbo guns far less accurate than their two-handed default equivalent – even with Steady Aim – would encourage slower but more rewarding playstyles, without sacrificing their role as close-range backup for snipers.

2) Seriously, Why Are Flares Still Automatic?

The general de-emphasis of offensive killstreaks in favour of team-friendly Support pointstreaks is a huge leap in the right direction, but mighty Osprey choppers and AC-130 gunships still act undeservedly unassailable. When the best players are given even more opportunities to remotely blow up the losing team, is it really so much to ask to have them take their finger off the trigger for one second to deploy their defensive flares manually?

3) Even The Odds: Give Out Free Unlocks

One of the reasons I abandoned Battlefield 3 was that I was sick of getting killed by people with objectively superior weapon attachments to what I’d unlocked so far. Thanks to smaller maps, higher damage and lower recoil, this isn’t so much of an issue in MW3 – someone with an ACOG scope doesn’t necessarily have an absolute advantage over iron sights peasants (as in BF3). Still, the new Proficiencies (perks for weapons rather than people – lower recoil, better bullet penetration etc.) don’t start unlocking until several levels in, and new ones appear only infrequently after that.

It would be great if freshly-unlocked weapons came with all the Proficiency options included. There are still incentives to level up in attachments and camos, but newer players start out on a slightly more level playing field – and are free to experiment with different setups before they settle into a complete loadout.

Season 5, which only has a couple of episodes left to air, has been crafted in the oddly beneficial knowledge that this is truly, properly, for realsies the end this time. That means no more infuriating cliffhangers, no more tiptoeing around character development or playing coy with backstory. The end is nigh, but for once in US TV, they saw it coming. This doesn’t mean, however, the ostensible plan to tie four season’s worth of only unconncected stories into a final mega-conspiracy hasn’t been a total bust – after setting that up in the season 4 finale, it seems like the writers didn’t actually know how to pull it off, so substituted it for a smaller plot masterminded by someone who wasn’t even a villain until halfway through season 3.

That said, Shaw is an awesome villain – genuinely threatening but frequently funny (“If you were, you would have brought a coat. Silly.”). It’s hard to think of Brandon Routh as anyone other than the hilarious psychic vegan bassist from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Word, but his character here – a symptom of a not-seen-enough side to Chuck, one which doesn’t pull punches and isn’t afraid to put bullets in the main cast – makes me sad that we’ve seen the last of him.

Otherwise, S5 has been mostly great. Action sequences are more ambitious and better-choreographed than ever, the references remain pleasingly modern, and the subversion of the Intersect from magic cure-all to a brain-melting scourge is the perfect way to put a lid on the whole thing. It’s a bit weird seeing Chuck himself being a decent fighter, hacker, shooter etc. without it – the initial appeal was, of course, seeing a complete dork fumble his way through international incidents – but hey, they’ve all got to grow up some time.

A.K.A. “Hey, You Can’t Just Review A Game After Only Playing Two And A Half Hours!” Fucking Watch Me, Episode 1

Generally, I’ve considered people who greatly enjoy the horror genre (in its many forms) to have something fundamentally wrong with them. Like, did you not evolve correctly, man? Humans aren’t meant to enjoy being scared! It’s scary! Toddlers don’t crawl across their bedrooms floors to gleefully yank their soothing nightlight from its socket, quietly muttering “Hee hee, this is gonna be sick”!

Nevertheless, I had to at least try Amnesia. There were two main justifications for this foray into the incredibly brown unknown: first was the marvellous Nightmare House 2, which boasted not just a compelling urgency (and a surprising amount of polish for a mod), but just enough glimpses of hope amongst the bleakness to make me doubt my own blanket dismissal of horror as a miserable, anti-fun category. Second was…well, it was a gift from my housemates. Two of them are on Steam. If I couldn’t even try to stomach it, they’d know. Plus, I’d be tossing aside a gift. Even history’s worst murderers, despots and dictators probably wouldn’t do that. Even if most of them had Steam accounts.

After consulting a wiki or two, I’d say I’m about a quarter to a third in, and finding things to love has been…difficult. It repeatedly uses a level design structure I’ve hated for years – a ‘hub’ area, with little to interact with except the door to the next area, which in turn can only be opened by venturing into four or five neighbouring doors to pull a distant lever or collect some mundane, inanimate object. Said objects can then be combined, with a series of highly tense and not at all tedious mouse clicks and turns, to create that particular area’s McGuffin Key. Guys, this isn’t puzzle solving, this is making pancakes on a larger scale.

Still, the atmosphere is undeniably top-notch, with musical cues playing a big part. There’s a gorgeous moment where you ascend a mouldy staircase into the relatively serene atrium above, while twinkling piano notes seem to echo off the lofty walls. Conversely, the brutal orchestral screeches that accompany an alerted mutant-servant manage to be far more unsettling than the terminally astigmatic, absurdly warped creatures themselves.

In terms of scares, the trippy screen blur that signifies a nasty bout of temporary (as in, lasting under a minute) insanity is more irritating than terrifying, but the potential is there. I’d happily never have to deal with the invisible water-dwelling demon that kills in two hits, can sprint like the wind and boasts the loudest, most maniacal audio theme in the game thus far again, but it’s clear Amnesia doesn’t have nearly enough concern for my mental well-being for that to be the case. So, yeah, Frictional Games, you can have this one.

I’m hoping that, once the story picks up and starts being about more than scribbles on paper scraps, the inane item-gathering will make way for some more meaningful exploration. Frankly, there’s still little fun to be had sobbing inside a cupboard, but it would be nice – if nothing else – to be proved wrong about the wider entertainment value of horror for the second time running.

Personal

So the relationship I was in for five years blew up in my face. I’ve stopped blaming myself, which annoyingly precludes the whole thing as a learning experience, but with a handful of essays, a new writing opportunity and the annual November games glut, I’ve been lucky enough to take my mind off it. For the most part. It’s difficult to imagine going that far with something without thinking about the future, even if the current situation makes that future seem unlikely or unclear, and though I’d never want to be with someone who wasn’t happy as such, it’s hard to watch as that future gets taken away barely a week after everything seems to be fine.

Other than losing my best friend, things haven’t been so bad. Communal deathmatch sessions are a semi-regular feature in the house I joined in September, and our pub quiz team has been performing far better than we have any right to, even with the Diet Coke-marinated brain of a hairy Journalism student on side.

Games

See Gaming Daily for my Games o’ t’Year – in hindsight I possibly could have added ‘current judgement-clouding infatuation’ to the reasons Skyrim isn’t there. I didn’t get it until the third week of November, and I’ve played over 90 hours – to give an admittedly flawed comparison, that’s only 10 less than my time spent in Killing Floor, and that’s two years old.

In terms of not-PC, I ended up selling both my PSP and my DSi. A phone upgrade made the multimedia benefits of the PSP chunkily obsolete, and there’s no denying I only ever wanted to play Pokemon Heart Gold on that little dual-screened thing – evidently I don’t mind paying over £100 for nostalgia. The proceeds went towards a PS3, primarily with a view for Guitar Hero parties but ultimately becoming a mere conduit for Uncharted 3. Loved it regardless, but how the hell am I not broke?

‘Work’

Ha. If I said I’d try for paid work this time last year, it was never recorded so at least I have plausible deniability when someone accuses me of failing. That said, there are two notable things that happened this year with regards to my pathetic non-career: firstly, I joined BeefJack – capitalise the J, that shit’s important – as a news writer. I only cover Tuesdays at the moment, but I’m glad to be doing something a little outside my comfort zone. Doing news badly is one of the worst things you can do, but there’s no way of learning like doing, so it’s worth the constant sense of ‘Christ, what if I fuck this up?’ that only sometimes plagues my reviews/feature-writing process. Thanks to editor/big boss man Lewis for showing me the ropes.

Secondly, I got Sunday Paper’d! The appearance of Gaming Daily in Rock, Paper Shotgun’s weekly links roundup is a semi-regular occurrence, and it’s always nice to see the sudden spike in traffic, but this is the first time thousands of people have been simultaneously pointed at something of mine. I don’t want to imbue RPS with some kind of godlike quality, capable of controlling the entire flow of PC gaming enthusiasts on the internet, but getting a ‘Yeah, this is worth reading I suppose’ from the pros makes me a wee bit proud. And scared of reading the comments.

Music

I bought just two albums this year – one was comedy rap, the other was Foo Fighter’s excellent Wasting Light. Recorded, on tape, in Dave Grohl’s garage, this is such a perfect blend of the personal and the ferociously rocky that (unlike every other album they’ve made) I actually like more than three songs on it. Well done, Foos, now tour the UK again.

So, most of my new music this year has come in sub-five-minute chunks. BEHOLD the excitable poppy brilliance of this song about Mass Effect’s lead character! GAZE upon Corridor Digital’s gorgeously shot Dubstep Guns short, which is not just The Best Video On YouTube (No Complaining), but actually made me enjoy a couple of dubstep songs! GET KIND OF PLEASANTLY CONFUSED by how enjoyable this Zebrahead cover of a Spice Girls hit can be!

Overall

A year of dizzying highs and thoroughly sucky lows, 2011 would be lucky to get a 6/10. I’m going into 2012 a lot more uncertain of particular things, and time is absolutely running out for me to turn words into even a little bit of cash. Still, I have my health, a bond less than three weeks from maturing, and a fair collection of folks who’ve been nothing but nice to me since January. I don’t have a calculator to hand, but that seems like a net positive.